The Way West Part 33

Ten miles. Good gra.s.s. Timber only on the stream. Walla Walla Indians with potatoes and venison to trade. Dirty Indians. Not like the Cayuses. Showed the lack of Christianity, if Weatherby was right. Byrd's cart rolling solid. Patch as good as new. Summers saying watch out for these measly Injuns; what ain't nailed down they'll steal. Sights, words, feelings, questions, all washing with the river, all sensed across the mind-heard murmur of it.

He reached it when the sun was down and dusk lay thin among the hills. He reached it after heavy going through wild and sandy land where p.r.i.c.kly pear and greasewood tried to grow. Out from it was barrenness, holding like a grudge the whee1 scar of their pa.s.sage, out from it no water, wood or graze; and on the sh.o.r.e was just a strip of gra.s.s and c.o.c.klebur and sunflower blooming hardy.

A lonely, empty land where thought itself might echo. A new, old, wide-flung, solitary country purpled by the coming night. A place to make a man feel small, to drive his thoughts to cozy memories, to barns and barnyards and a rooster crowing and victual-scented kitchens closed away from s.p.a.ce.

But here the river ran!

Evans brought his gaze in close and saw the pebbly bottom and the water flowing clear. He let it stream on with the stream, across the silver flat of it and down its course to where it met the night. Beyond, he knew, the channel narrowed into falls and rapids, and so they'd have to wheel below. Still, here was the river road, the wide and sweeping road, the final road to Oregon. Here like a known thing on the way to home it was, like a recollected sh.o.r.e, like home itself.

A shudder shook him, and he started at d.i.c.k's voice and looked to right and left and saw that he was not alone and remembered how they'd left the wagons to stand upon the bank.

"'Bout four days to the Dalles," d.i.c.k said.

Chapter Twenty-Nine.

JUDITH FAIRMAN sat by the river, which here near the mission house flowed with a kind of quiet peace after the violence she had glimpsed from the trail. Only here and there, in a boil of water or a flung wave, were the sudden, sharp rememberings of anguish. A river, she thought, was either a sad or anguished thing, compelled in either case to run its journey to seas n.o.body knew. Each drop of water flowed away, here for an instant and gone forever. The drift -the broken sunflower blossom, the naked snag, the dead fish, the foam wheeling from an eddy- it flowed away. Only the sun, lowering now, held steady on the surface, waiting its own time to move.

Voices sounded behind her, muted by distance. From down-stream came the knock of axes, swung by earlier arrivals now busy building arks for the voyage to the Willamette. She caught the voices of men and Indians and the cries of children not killed by rattlesnakes.

"You be careful, Bethany," she called out. "Don't go too close."

The Byrd child tried to throw a stick into the water and turned around, hair goldened by the slanting sun, a small, fair girl with childhood's open wonder in her eyes. "I am." She reached down for another stick.

Judith herself was, she thought, content, sad and content, waiting like a hen on eggs for the slow warmth of her to bring the chick out of its sh.e.l.l. She hadn't any wish to talk, though Charles sat by her, his gaze like hers fixed on the water.

Content? Eased? Forgetful in the day-by-day? Sometimes the memory of Tod was driven out, by cooking, driving, weariness, by the hard demands of life and travel, and she would come back to it guilty, resentful of the interventions, and, crying, hold close the treasure of her grief.

Or she would find herself escaping, in conversation, in talk of Oregon, in dreaming of the unborn baby, in offering to tend the Byrd child after the wrecking of the wagon, in washing the small face and combing out the tangled hair.

"Please, Beth, not so close."

"I'm careful." The child came up and made room for herself in Judith's lap. "I want something to eat."

"We'll eat before long." The young smell came to Judith, the young and tender smell that once had been the smell of Toddie. She might be my very own, she thought, and let her lips brush the bright head. She might almost be Tod.

"I ought to be seeing about a boat," Charles said, still looking at the water. "We'll have to buy or build or something, the two boats for hire are engaged so far ahead. They're high, too, though I guess we could afford them."

"We just got here today," she answered, not wanting him to leave. She wondered if he felt the same as she did. Did any two people ever feel the same? Did ever one soul know another, though they shared bed and fortune, though they talked at night, though sometimes in hunger and in isolation they sought to make their bodies one, the all-mother in her loneliness trying to take back home the lost child-man?

While she wondered, Bethany squirmed off her lap and went to sorting pebbles.

"I guess we can wait until tomorrow," Charles said, "but I'll have to get busy then."

He would have to get busy. Always there was busyness, always calls on mind and body, always interventions. For Charles did Toddie lie far off, across the waste of land and time, beyond the rivers, over the mountains, across the sands? Had the picture of him blurred, the sound of his young voice grown indistinct from others except sometimes at night when, unbearably, he lived again?

Charles' hand touched hers, braced back upon the bank, and she welcomed it but didn't speak. What was talk, she asked herself, but fumbling for thought? Why speak? Why try to say? Thought and feeling didn't come in words. What lived inside herself she had no self words for. Better to keep silent. Better to rely on the flow of heart to heart.

What was grief? What was this long sorrow? What had Becky Evans said, with compa.s.sion underneath the hard simplicity? That no one could afford grief very long? As if grief were a luxury, an indulgence not to be enjoyed if a woman met her duties. That was the rule, she realized when Becky stated it, the rule to Oregon, the rule of all frontiers, the rule perhaps of life, but still she hated it. Still she fought against it, feeling hurt and guilt for having lost Tod in a ch.o.r.e.

Well, she had done her duties. She had found strength. She had borrowed it from Rebecca. If she cried, she cried at night and got up in good time and met the day. She would refute the rule. She would do her work and hold her grief. Not now, not ever, would Tod be lost to her.

She heard the sigh she hadn't known was coming. She knew her thought was tangled. Work, baby and Oregon, and Tod how could her heart and mind make room for all of them, and first of all for Charles? Only time could tell her, and G.o.d if He would be so good.

Beth came to give her a white rock she had found. "Pretty?" she asked while her fat hand laid it in the open palm.

"Very pretty."

"Will you keep it in your house?"

"It will be a present from you."

"Can I come to see you sometimes when I get home?"

"Of course. But you're not going home."

"Home to Oregon," the child explained and walked off to find more rocks.

Home to Oregon. Home to a home unremembered, never seen, still unbuilt. Home across the endless plains, over thrusting mountains, through sad or anguished streams. Home.

And yet the thought was somehow good, the thought of homes to be, reached by bravery and strength, wrought out of wilderness, earned by work and suffering. Judith could see the home they'd have -a cabin first, unless saw lumber could be bought, and maybe later on a house of brick. Its structure didn't matter yet. At the doorstep played the child she carried. Here in new land they'd work their fucure out. Today was new, and new tomorrows waited, and new ones for her love.

She said to Charles, "Sometimes I feel disloyal."

"Disloyal?"

"Don't you know?"

He nodded slowly, "I do, too."

She knew he knew. She knew his mind had turned to his returning interest in Oregon, to deeds done and words uttered in forgetfulness.

"Is it right, Charles? Can it be right?"

"It must be, Judie. It has to be. It's the same with everyone."

She fought the easy tears. "I never want to forget."

"You never will. But still we have to go ahead."

"Sometimes I don't know whether I'm thinking about Tod or the baby." The baby, she thought. Boy or girl, dark or fair, thrifty or frail, it must be Tod again. It would be Tod, and itself too, and sorrow and joy and remembrance and forgetfulness and recompense. And she would have for it all the love G.o.d had put in her for Tod, all He'd put there for her unborn seed. But still she cried, "It can't take Tod's place! It can't!"

His hand came to her shoulder. "Don't torture yourself."

"It mustn't!"

"Don't be afraid. We will remember, always, but it's the living we can help."

"I know," she answered, wrung by the truth of what he said.

He raised his eyes, to the sky in which one cloud sailed, and she guessed he was thinking that that was where Tod was. "He would want you to love the baby," he said.

Bethany came from the river's edge. "I'm hungry."

"We'll eat right away," she answered, but before she got up, while her hand steadied her and her foot placed itself, she thought she felt the first flutter of the new life.

From the fire she'd kindled Rebecca Evans saw the Fairmans. From the fire she'd kindled Rebecca Evans saw the Fairmans returning from the river, with Beth Byrd hanging on to Judith's hand. She waved a greeting to them and stooped to lay some bigger sticks upon the growing blaze. "There's a good woman," she told Mercy, wondering when the words were out how often she had said them.

Mercy wasn't one to point out she'd heard so before. While she worked dough on a board she looked up. "Yes," she answered.

"She's comin' to herself. Once the baby's here she'll be all right."

Mercy's gaze slid down. She didn't talk much. What was in her mind stayed there. But still she wasn't sulky. Sober, yes, but not ill-natured. Quiet with a kind of watching quietness. Quick, hard-working, and sparing with her words as if she didn't dare to say much. "Wonder when the men'll come?" Rebecca asked. "Late, I reckon. No tellin' about Lije and d.i.c.k."

The two had ridden off an hour or two after the train had reached the Dalles, trailing a couple of pack horses that looked top-heavy with their loads of buffalo robes. Rebecca didn't know just what they went for. To trade, Lije said. No use to hang around the Dalles. You couldn't hire or buy a boat there.

She didn't press him. She wasn't worried as some women were about how to get downriver. Lije would manage. He always did, leaving her to worry, if she had to, over other things.

"Brownie ought to be here pretty soon," Mercy said. "I saw the cattle guards go out to spell him."

"There ain't much to come for. Fish again, and rice. That and bread, and we'll get out some sweetenin'. Wish we had some greens and jowl."

Things were ready, or ready enough -fish cleaned and sliced, water heating for the rice, bread fixed to bake. Rebecca was glad they still had coffee left and sugar for it. The fare was poor enough in these last days. "I'll put a pot of coffee on," she said, "and then we'd better wait. We could set a while."

"I'm not tired. We'll need more water."

"You will be if you do around all day."

They sat out from the fire, for the evening's cool was slow in ,coming. From her position Rebecca could see the wrinkle that led up to the flanking hills. The Dalles. This was the Dalles for which they'd strained so long, the Methodist mission, the dreamed-of end of wagon travel, the name that helped to charm them on when gra.s.s was poor and water scarce and hope shriveled in the breast. It was just a mountain niche, a piece of bottom and sidehill, a breathing place between the heights and river, unknown maybe but to Indians until the Methodists had built a mission now seemingly about to peter out. The buildings, along with scattered Indian huts, gave the spot the look of settlement, but church and school and missionaries hadn't changed the Indians. They were a dull and heathen lot. They stank with rotten fish and rabbit. They answered poorly to the prayers of Weatherby. They still went naked, most of them. d.i.c.k said it was because no fur grew on a salmon.

Rebecca thought this place had never seen the likes of now, with wagons arched around, men talking of the trip and of the voyage ahead, their children running, their women visiting, the new arrivals mixing in, asking were there boats, asking what to do then, saying pleased to meetcha, my home ain't far from yours. Like the wagons there already, those of her own train had wheeled in ragged with the miles, the work stock stringy, the paint of wagon covers coated gray or black, the women worn down to the final sc.r.a.ps of dress, the men to mended pants and Indian buckskin.

Here the trains divided out. Here the kinship of the trail was loosened, each company confused with others, each family knowing now it stood alone, each feeling somehow strange toward those who'd been so close. The tie had been untied, Rebecca thought. This was the end of something hard and good, of something that would stay in mind to death. She and Lije and Brownie and Mercy, there were just them alone, except they wouldn't cut loose from the Byrds and Fairmans yet. A kind of claim lay on them, she and Lije agreed, a duty to the weak and weakened.

"Won't hurt to put the rice on," she said and started to get up, but Mercy beat her to her feet and spilled the rice into theboiling water and thought to move the pot to where it wouldn't sputter over.

"I ain't so old," she said. "You don't have to fetch and carry for me." Watching the girl's quick movewents, seeing the little smile, she felt again the squeeze of inner tenderness. Whatever Mercy's parents were, whatever she had done before, she was a winning thing. You had to say, regardless, she was that. She made a body want to do for her, to take her under wing, to cluck there were no hawks about.

Beyond the fire a woman pa.s.sed, tugged by one child and heavy with another. It was a sight, Rebecca thought, the way the young ones came along. With every train or piece of train were children, some born along the trail. With every one were women big in front.

Hardly meaning to, she let her gaze slide to the girl-wife by her. What was it told her? The filling-in of shoulders? The rounding into womanhood? The glow of face? The secret lying in the eyes? No matter what it was, she knew and was troubled with the knowing.

July. Late July to September 21. A short two months. Not long enough to show unless -unless- The question, the sore wondering, wouldn't down. Sometimes as Brownie's mother she had a mind to ask, to up and ask as maybe was her right and have the fact to go on. Sometimes she felt she wasn't motherly to let suspicion lie. And sometimes, seeing Brownie and the way of him toward Mercy, she guessed he had the answer. She felt his hurt then and knew anger and the urge to hurt his hurter.

She had held in. She had calmed Lije, who was upset enough without this added reason. She had bragged of Mercy. She had tried to be a mother to her, too. She wasn't sure of all the reasons why. Was it, she wondered, that any woman felt sister to another, partner in need against the breed of men? Was it Mercy's being Mercy? Was it the belief they'd have to make the best of things regardless? Was it the chance that Brownie'd been the man himself, before their marriage?

She'd like to think so, but it was outlandish. He didn't know enough. He wasn't bold. Just a boy yet. Who then? Who'd shone around her before Brownie took her to the preacher? No one much. She hadn't teased the men on, not that Rebecca knew. Everyone had liked her, though, and Mr. Mack had acted extra nice.

"Brownie's comin'," Mercy said. "See, stakin' out his horse?"

Brownie walked up and said h.e.l.lo, and Mercy said h.e.l.lo, and Rebecca said, "Your pa and d.i.c.k ain't here yet. They'll be along, though. We'll get the things to cookin'."

Lije came in while she was frying fish. "You'll be where you want to be before you know it," he said, smiling with some good news in him. "How's the gra.s.s, boy?"

"Fair. We took 'em back a ways."

"Where's d.i.c.k?" Rebecca asked.

"Won't be in till mornin'."

"You mean he's lyin' out, without food or a bed?"

"Shoo! That ain't nothin'. Not for d.i.c.k."

Lije was feeling big. As they sat down to eat, Rebecca thought she would have known it from his looks, without a word being said.

"That d.i.c.k!" he said and speared a slice of fish.

She asked, "What about him?"

"Knows everything. Fixes for everything. We'll be afloat tomorrow." He paused, getting, she knew, a small enjoyment from their wonderment.

"I thought there wasn't boats."

"Ain't."

"Well?"

"You know them buffalo d.i.c.k had us skin and save the hides?"

"Out with it, Pa!" Brownie said.

"It's them we'll sail on, in a way." Lije let them figure for a minute. "These Injuns got canoes, but nary st.i.tch of clothes. Gits cold in the winter, too. They sure like buffalo robes."

"You aim to sail in one of them rough dugouts?" Rebecca asked.

He shook his head. "That d.i.c.k! Wanted us to get busy, before the canoes was all traded off."

"I swear, Lije, you take a heap of coaxin'."

"We'll fix us flatboats. Take down the wagons and lay the side and bottom boards across canoes and maybe raise a sail. Then, h.e.l.lo, home."

"What about the rest?"